Wednesday, August 27, 2014

A short while ago science journalist Patrick Mustain wrote to me detailing a new initiative of his called New Body Ethic. After taking some time to look at it, I asked Patrick if he'd be willing to write a guest post to introduce this worthy initiative to Weighty Matters readers. If your job involves working with clients to help improve their health, fitness, or lifestyle, please take a moment to read through and then consider signing up.

The Fitness-Industrial-Complex Is Deceiving You.A Group Of Fitness Professionals Is Setting Out To Change That.
Patrick Mustain, MPH, MA

Chances are, at some point in the last few days, you have been lied to about health. It’s a safe bet that some magazine or TV show has told you (yes, you!) that you can lose weight easily and quickly. This blatant lie is constantly being debunked by health and obesity experts, yet it persists, and people seem to continue to believe it.

More insidious, perhaps, is a not-so-obvious deception that permeates the language from the fitness industry--that dieting and exercise are things that you should be doing in the first place, and that failure to do either stems from a lack of personal responsibility, or some moral deficit.

For most of the history of life, the most important thing, for most people, was obtaining and conserving energy from food. Feeling guilty about eating food, and burning energy just for the sake of burning energy would have made no sense to our ancestors.

Of course, 10,000 years ago, we didn’t have cars, escalators, and office jobs. We didn’t drink refined sugar with every meal, we didn’t eat dessert every day, we didn’t shape our children’s food preferences with billions of dollars in marketing, and we didn’t have an industrialized food system dominated by hyper-palatable, energy-dense, nutritionally devoid, highly-processed products.

Clearly things are quite different now than they were 10,000 years ago, and in lots of good ways--we don’t have to chase down and kill our food. Thankfully, most of us will not be chased down and become meals ourselves. And we have plumbing. But, along with these advances, we’ve inherited a growing burden of obesity and chronic disease, soon to overtake tobacco as the leading cause of preventable death worldwide.

Enter the fitness industry.

As obesity and its associated health problems have reached global pandemic levels, the fitness industry has flourished. According to franchisehelp.com, the number of fitness centers in the U.S. went from roughly 17,000 in 2000 to almost 30,000 by 2008, and this growth is showing no signs of slowing down. A cursory glance at fitness websites, reality shows, magazines, gym literature, et cetera will tell us that the fitness industry is here to save us from being fat.

It is no surprise that we hear very little from the fitness industry about fostering an environment that prevents weight gain. Weight gain is the fitness industry’s bread and butter, so of course the focus is going to be on the quick fixes, the anecdotes about extreme weight loss “successes,” and the false sense of ease and speed—very little that actually has a meaningful impact on health. All these things keep people striving for that unattainable goal, and coming back for that next issue of Shape, the next insanity workout, and the next belly-fat-busting miracle supplement. But the brilliant thing about all these products is that when they don’t work, it’s because you didn’t work hard enough to make them work. You failed at the diet. You didn’t exercise quite enough.

There are many health and fitness professionals out there who want to change this culture of fitness. They understand that health and wellness and come from a lifelong process of learning how to take care of one’s body, for the long-term, not the quick fix. They seek to understand the environmental and cultural contexts in which we make our health decisions. They avoid focusing mostly on aesthetic outcomes. Rather, they try to help their clients learn to appreciate their bodies the way they are in the moment, but also to realize the wonderful potential each body holds for overcoming challenges, adapting, and learning new skills and movements.

Patrick Mustain, MPH, MA, studied kinesiology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, public health at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, and medical and science journalism at the University of North Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communication. He is currently a Communications Manager at the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity, and a writer and multimedia producer for Scientific American’s Food Matters blog.

Patrick started his personal training and fitness career after catching the fitness bug in the U.S. Navy. He spent eleven years asking the question: “How can we make it easier for all people to live healthier lives?” This is the best answer he’s come up with so far. He likes climbing on things, running around outside, and sandwiches.

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

"Meanwhile our sugar consumption continues to increase. Has it reached the maximum? Are the advent of highly refined glucose and the growing consumption of corn syrup, in addtion to other refined carbohydrates, about to make the proportion of sugar calories in the daily diet of our people even larger? These are questions that deserve careful consideration in a candy loving nation."

Monday, August 25, 2014

On sugar and processed foods. I think the authors were wizards. BTW, another quote on both again tomorrow.

"The fact that one-fifth of our diet, nowadays, consists of this vitamin-free food (sugar) is especially important because the other four fifths have also lost much of their vitamin potencies in the refining processes to which so many modern foods are subjected. If we continue to refine more and more foods, and to include in our daily calorie ration an ever larger proportion of pure sugar, the time may come when we shall feel a serious lack of one of these food "accessories". Our diet will have become dangerously diluted by the substitution of pur sugar for some of the old-fashied vitamin-bearing or mineral-bearing foods."

Friday, August 22, 2014

Of all the male TV personas out there, there's none I'm more fond of than Park and Recreation's Ron Swanson, and while this isn't technically a Ron Swanson Funny Friday video, I'm pretty sure everything Nick Offerman ever says will for me be spoken by Ron Swanson.

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Why don't doctors and other health professionals know this yet? This is the concept that both underlies Dr. Sharma's EOSS staging system and plagues BMI's individual application.

"It is often difficult to answer the question: How much ought I to weight? It is far more important to know how the weight is changing. If a person's weight has long been stationary, and he is able to do effective work; if he has no obvious disease, and, if, especially, his build is like that of other members of his family, he may conclude that his weight is normal for him.".

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

The FTC and Health Canada should take note of this next quote from way back in 1929. Bang on the money I'd say.

"An intensive study of medical frauds and fads made over a period of nearly twenty years has convinced me that in the whole realm of quackery there is no field that is more easily worked nor one that offers greater financial returns to the medical swindler than that devoted to the exploitation of "cures" for obesity".

Thursday, August 14, 2014

Given society's never ending unhealthy and toxic focus on weight, the "reducing craze" isn't all that difficult to understand today but that doesn't make ideal weights or BMI based goals any less crazy.

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

I wasn't going to comment as I didn't want to call attention to it, but having been sent this video over a dozen times now I realize I'd better add my voice.

I'm not a fan.

It's everything that's ugly about society's attitudes towards weight boiled into a 2 minute video treatise on how gluttony and sloth are to blame for obesity....oh, and add in lazy parents.

Presumably the point of the ad is to cause viewers with weight, and parents of kids who may be struggling, to feel sufficient guilt, shame and self-loathing that they finally decide to change their ways.

Well I've got news for the Children's Healthcare of Atlanta folks who produced this ad (and that equally misguided one up above) - if guilt or shame had any lasting impact on weight or behaviour the world would be skinny, as guilt and shame are the two things that the world bends over backwards to ensure that people with weight never run short of.

And yes, parents have a real role to play in all of this, but fear and shame aren't likely to get them there.

As I've said before, childhood obesity is a symptom of a broken environment, kids haven't changed, the world around them has, and part of the world's changes (but by no means always the lion's share) include what are now considered to be normal parental feeding behaviours. Shaming the symptom without tackling the cause is likely only to add to the belief that fat shaming has a role to play in fixing the environment, and yet fat shaming is anything but helpful.

Monday, August 11, 2014

My American readers may have missed this, but Health Canada, has proposed that on Canada's future nutrition fact panels there'll be guidance surrounding "total" sugar, rather than "added" sugar. Health Canada is advising a 100 gram cap on "total" sugar and so if something you eat has 25g of sugar, that'll be reflected as 25% of your total daily maximal recommendations.

What does that mean? I think Health Minister Rona Ambrose explained it pretty succinctly,

"we're treating sugar as sugar, whether it's from an apple or it's from a yogurt or it's from a cookie."

Why is this a problem?

Try this on for size.

If you had just 2 apples, a banana, a serving of carrots and 2 cups of milk you'll hit this nonsensical total sugar maximum with none of the sugars involved being added by anyone other than mother nature.

As to how these recommendations could have made it this far, aside from these recommendations appeasing the food industry, perhaps it's because as Minister Ambrose reported,

"The way we approached it - the way I approached it, is from a parent's point of view."

Here's a thought. How about we approach it from the point of view of science and consider the impact of diet on chronic disease which in turn suggests "added" sugar as the type we should limit, and instead of providing Canadians with the wrong message of capping "total" sugars at 100g, provide them with the guidance that "added" sugars be capped at somewhere between 25-50grams?

Please consider sharing this. Perhaps with enough noise this can still change.

[I'd tell you to go to head to the online consultation on the new Nutrition Facts Panel, but having completed it myself, it's clear Health Canada isn't interested in formative feedback. Instead they're wondering what you think of the size of the fonts they've chosen, whether you look at the %DV and if you think being told 5% is a little and 15% is a lot is useful, which of 3 approaches looking at total and not added sugars you like best, whether or not you think uniform serving sizes are helpful, if you like the new layout of the ingredient listings, and finally what you like most, what you like least, and any additional comments you might have....but not more than 500 words please. As far as I'm concerned, the online consultation is just a lip service exercise and far from a formative one.]

Thursday, August 07, 2014

It's a graphic that Nestlé is going to place on their candy packaging telling consumers what a serving is and they're literally calling it a "Portion Device" and describing it as "new" and "innovative".

As to my question of whether or not it's the stupidest front-of-package program ever devised the answer to that question is likely the same as the answer to this question - will people still eat the whole package of Smarties (for you Americans they're the same thing as M&Ms) if the front of the box says a serving is only 15 of them (meaning there are 3.7333333 "Portion Device" servings in a 50g box)?

If you're going to put anything other than a warning on the front of a package of Smarties, it should be the calories and added sugar you'd get from consuming the entire box, because that's what consumers do, and no doubt Nestlé already knows that.

(and if you were wondering, the whole box (and not the King size, just the regular) contains 230 calories and 9.25 teaspoons of sugar)

Wednesday, August 06, 2014

"$1 from every Deep Fried Cheesecake sold will be donated to the JDRF, the leading global organization funding type 1 diabetes research. Our goal is to progressively remove the impact of T1D from people's lives until we achieve a world without T1D".

It's summer camp. For elementary school kids. At McDonald's in the Philippines. And it's been running since 1991.

What will the campers do there?

They'll serve as free child labour for McDonald's. No, really. According to the Kiddie Crew homepage,

"During each workshop day, Kiddie Crew members will get to experience on-floor training like greeting customers and assisting the crew at the drive-thru and front counters; showcase their skills through creative art workshops; and learn the importance of hard work, discipline and teamwork, through values formation lessons."

And there'll be lots of positive branding opportunities for them as well - including this awesome camp song (really, it's so insane you have to click it):

And if you think you can stomach it, here's McDonald's own 10 minute video highlighting the the week-long, imerssive advertisement that parents actually pay McDonald's to sear into their kids' brains.

The SWEET Act, if passed, would see every teaspoon of added sugar in a beverage you purchase cost you one additional shiny penny at the register.

And boy would those pennies add up.

The tax would raise $10 billion a year with the monies in turn being earmarked for programs to combat the diseases that high sugar intakes exacerbate or cause. Examples of such programs include subsidizing fresh fruits and vegetables in schools and for SNAP (food stamp) recipients, funding school-based interventions and policies such as farm-to-school programs, increasing access to healthy food in low-income neighbourhoods, paying for social marketing campaigns to counteract the marketing strategies used by the beverage industry to market sugar-sweetened beverages to children, and helping in establishing state-wide, comprehensive obesity and diabetes prevention programs. Not to mention the fact that the tax also might lead to a direct decrease in soda consumption as has potentially occurred in Mexico since their soda tax was implemented (I say potentially only in that causation can't be formally proven, but in the quarter since Mexico implemented their soda tax, consumption has dropped nearly 3%).

As far as burden to consumers go for all for all of this, it'll be minimal. To put the proposed tax in some perspective, even if you're chugging a litre of Coca-Cola a day, the tax would only end up costing you an additional $2 a week.

Sounds pretty amazing to me - so amazing that it's almost unfathomable that any nutrition or health professional would oppose it as after all, we're talking about an annualized $10 billion national injection of health and nutrition programming and subsidies, along with the potential bonus of decreasing sugar sweetened beverage consumption.

You'd think that RDs across the country would be rejoicing, and yet...check out these tweets from registered dietitians Jen Haugen (Greater Minnesota Media Spokesperson, Minnesota Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics), Robyn Flipse, Neva Cochran (past president of both the Texas and Dallas Dietetic Associations), Rosanne Rust, Ann Dunaway Teh, Jill Levinson, Pat Baird (the president of the Connecticut Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics), and Melissa Musiker (Chair, State Board of Dietetics and Nutrition at District of Columbia). The first 7 were posted within hours of congresswoman DeLauro's SWEET Act introduction in the House, while the last was a response to this post:

So on what planet would an RD feel so strongly about a soda tax that he or she would not only privately think to him or herself that it won't work or isn't wise but also broadcast their opposition to it to the world via social media? On the planet where tweets from RDs can be purchased or so it would seem.

Have a peek at the ending of each of those first 7 tweets. The first 6 end with #Client disclosures, while the last (from the president of the Connecticut Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics) ends with the totally insufficient and undecipherable (and likely illegal) #client short form of #cl. Those hashtags are meant to inform readers that the authors' views therein are paid for or influenced by their clients - presumably arms of the food industry that would be unhappy if a soda tax ever passed (which in the case of the first 7 RDs include PepsiCo., Coca-Cola, The American Beverage Association, and the Corn Refiners Association, among many others). That last tweet? Well it's from an RD who is employed by APCO Worldwide - Big Beverage's PR firm of choice - and given she identifies self as RD in tweet, I'd think disclosure should require her to identify as working for the food industry as well.

But maybe I'm assuming too much. Maybe lots of RDs are opposed to taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages and are also, on their own volitions, actively speaking out against the proposed health promoting soda tax. So I asked Colby Vorland if he could scan his database of 197 RDs on Twitter for tweets that included the word "soda" or "tax" posted on July 30th and 31st (day of, and day after, bill introduction). And while clearly not a complete sampling of RDs on Twitter it's telling that the only negative sentiments expressed among the 197 RDs on Colby's list came from among those folks listed up above.

Putting all questions of tax efficacy at changing consumer behaviour aside, it certainly appears from their tweets that for them, the $10 billion a year for health and nutrition programs and promotion that a soda tax could raise, is outweighed by the $s directly or indirectly paid to them by their #clients.

(And because one or both of these arguments may well come up in the comments let me pre-emptively mention that if you argue that one horrifically racist and genocidal blog post represents all Israelis, or that the horrifically racist and genocidal Hamas charter represents all Palestinians, please reconsider your ability to have an intelligent discussion on pretty much anything. Similarly, if the blog post (written by a loathsome and idiotic American teenager who lives in his parents' New Jersey basement and was posted by him without editorial oversight only to be hastily removed and renounced by the Times of Israel and soon thereafter to be recanted by him) outrages you, but the (official since 1988 and still current) charter doesn't.)

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About Me

Family doc, Assistant Prof. at the University of Ottawa, Author of The Diet Fix, and founder of Ottawa's non-surgical Bariatric Medical Institute - a multi-disciplinary, ethical, evidence-based nutrition and weight management centre. Nowadays I'm more likely to stop drugs than start them. You can also find me on Twitter and Facebook.

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